Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,45

saw it last time and were too nice to say anything. So we can either listen to the radio or ‘Takin’ It to the Streets.’”

“Whatever’s good.”

He put on the rock station and a Boston song poured out. “Ugh. Someday, I’ll play you some real music.” He spun the radio dial, dissatisfied with everything.

“Here.” I pushed the button for the 8-track. “The Doobies would want it this way.”

Joe’s appreciative laugh made me laugh, and we listened to part of the song before he asked, “So how did practice go this week? Any goals?”

“Still no,” I said.

“Don’t be upset,” he said as he slowed for a stop sign. “It’ll happen.”

“Easy for you to say,” I told him.

“True.”

I made a gesture toward the radio. “So what’s your band like?”

“The Watergate Tapes? We’re sort of awful but we make it work for us,” he said. “Our drummer got a serious girlfriend, though, so we’ve barely been practicing.”

“Oh,” I said, thinking of Candace and George. “Do you think they’ll last?”

“I hope not. She’s super critical of everything Ben does. But you can’t explain why people like who they like.”

“So your girlfriend isn’t like that?” I said.

“Who?”

“The girl you were with at Sportmart?”

“Oh, that . . . didn’t really work out,” Joe said.

I wasn’t sure if I should ask about the break-up; I didn’t want to give him the idea that I might be interested or anything like that. But it didn’t matter, because we were pulling up at the park. Joe turned to me and said, “Has your coach shown you chops yet?”

I squinted at him.

“That’s a no,” he said. “Come on, we have work to do.” For someone who seemed so unserious, Joe was taking our practice really seriously. He jogged out to the field, looking happy to be there, then waved me over. “I think there’s a peewee football game here today, so we need to get going!”

Learning the chop was fun—it was a way to trick a defender by kicking the ball sideways from you to get around her.

But even though Joe declared me a natural at that, I hadn’t improved when it came to scoring on him. He was a walking, talking wall at the goal. He sort of loved how good he was, I could tell, from the way he flung himself in front of every one of my shots.

“Maybe I’m not meant to be a forward,” I said with a sigh after he easily fended off what I’d thought was a genius kick.

Joe shook his head and lobbed the ball over me to the center of the field, where I’d been starting from. “I think you have to use the power of attention,” he said.

“I’m paying attention!”

“No, no, I mean my attention. Say you’re coming up from the left,” he explained, as I dribbled the ball around a cone and toward him. “You’re going to want to aim for the opposite corner of the net, since I’d be looking at you and the ball.”

“Yeah, but that’s not going to work now,” I said. “I’m the only player out here—you’ll see me coming. It’s not like in a game, where you might get distracted.”

Joe puffed himself up, “Me? No freaking way. I’m always ready. Like, this one game, against St. Rita’s—”

And as he began to talk about how great he was, I lined up a shot and kicked, angling my body directly toward him. Joe, who normally saw shots coming from a mile away, looked stunned as the ball clipped by his ear and into the net.

“Fuck!” he said, at the same time I leaped into the air and screamed, “Hell yes!”

He was staring at the ball like it had betrayed him somehow.

“You knew I was going to make one someday,” I said, jogging up to him with my shoulders back. I picked up the ball with propriety and patted it like it was a loyal pet.

“You’re pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?” he said, bending down to retie his cleat.

“You know it. Now I’ll be ready for my first game.”

Joe looked up, raised an eyebrow. “You got a game?”

“Not yet,” I told him. “But soon.”

The peewee football coaches had shown up, and they shot Joe and me dirty looks, like they’d caught us having sex on the field. I started to gather the cones Joe had set up for me to weave around during warm-ups.

“Till then, you want to keep practicing? With me?”

“Yeah, definitely,” I said as we carried the stuff to his car. Standing behind him, I waited